


The Ratcatcher

by tetrahedron



Series: Märchen [1]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Earthborn (Mass Effect), Fairy Tale Retellings, Gen, Renegade Shepard (Mass Effect), the Pied Piper of Hamelin - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-17
Updated: 2017-03-17
Packaged: 2018-10-06 16:34:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10339254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tetrahedron/pseuds/tetrahedron
Summary: They may be the reapers, but she is the scythe.





	

"When, lo, as they reached the mountain-side,  
A wondrous portal opened wide,  
As if a cavern was suddenly hollowed;  
And the Piper advanced and the children followed,  
And when all were in to the very last,  
The door in the mountain-side shut fast."  
- _Robert Browning_

 

Jack doesn’t pray.

She knows it’s better not to involve the gods in your troubles. They might listen. Worse, they might intervene.

So she keeps her barrier strong, her face neutral. The situation looks bad, but she’s seen worse. If she were on her own, she’d slink around the corners, pick the enemy off in clumps. Fuck, maybe even find a way to take the whole station out, make her grand exit in one gigantic boom. Just the thought of an explosion that big sets her synapses humming, a rush of saliva flooding into her mouth, and she licks her lips.

The trouble is, she’s not on her own anymore.

“They’re getting closer,” Ensign Rodriguez whispers, chewing on the end of her braid. Her eyes are wide, and she’s sweating through her school uniform.

Jack knows that look, and the junkyard dog in her raises its hackles. _Don’t show them your throat,_ she wants to say, _it’s your teeth that you want them to see when they come through those doors._

But instead she reaches out, rubs the girl’s shoulder. “It’s gonna be okay,” she says. “Remember, they’re expecting a bunch of scared kids. And what are we?”

Rodriguez gives her a wavering smile. “The psychotic biotics,” she says, pumping her fist weakly.

Jack claps her on the back. “Damn right, short stuff,” she says. “This is our house. Let’s make em’ sorry they ever set foot on this station.”

The truth is that Grissom Academy is the only home that most of these kids have ever known. Rodriguez’s parents kicked her out when she first manifested. When Kahlee found her she was running with one of the ratcatcher gangs that were ubiquitous on every planet and station. Alliance was lucky they picked her up before someone else did. There were always plenty of takers for biotic kids; military, Cerberus, or mercenary organizations like the Blue Suns. There were even rumors that Eclipse had started setting up recruiting stations on Earth.

Jack thinks she might’ve had something to do with that. She’d certainly killed enough of those blue bitches for them to finally sit up and take notice of what humans were capable of.

Another boom shudders through the walls, and Jack turns her attention back to the door that stands between them and the enemy. It won’t hold for much longer now.

“Get behind me,” she snaps, her heart rate rising as she readies her barrier for the onslaught she knows is coming.

But when the blast doors finally do come down, it’s not Cerberus who comes swaggering through the wreckage.

Jack’s mouth goes dry. At her side, she can still hear Rodriguez whispering out prayers. It’s too late for prayer now, and it wouldn’t matter anyway. There is only one deity who has ever held any sway over Jack’s life, and she doesn’t give a shit about prayer.

Shepard looks different from the last time Jack saw her. When they’d surrendered on Earth, she’d been in civvies, skin pale after months of artificial light, her eyes dark and bruised. She’d almost looked human.

Now she is a titan in Alliance armor, black and white and red, a war goddess flanked by a hulking soldier Jack doesn’t recognize, and her ever present shadow, Vakarian. His face still looks like shit.  

They say Lawson brought her back from the dead. Jack can’t imagine her ever dying. She is death’s harbinger, the jackal that brings the meat to her master’s hand. Jack has seen her convince hardened mercenaries to turn over their guns, watched her talk complete strangers into dying for her, has felt that same magnetic pull herself whenever Shepard levels the full weight of her gaze on her. And sometimes Jack wonders if this is how indoctrination feels; like everything else crumbling away beneath the calm certainty of that look, hollowing you out and filling you up at at the same time so that there is no hesitation, no room for doubt.

When Shepard calls, you follow.

Shepard pulls off her helmet, her red hair matted against her head, and her teeth flash white. “Jack,” she says. “It’s been a while.”

The sutures in her cheeks gleam red when she smiles, and Jack thinks she can see the outline of the skull beneath her skin. _You’re a part of this_ , she wants to say. _Whatever they did to you on Eden Prime, whatever Lawson put inside you when she got ahold of your corpse, it made you like them. You, the husks, the harvesters, you’re all a part of the same machinery, the same clockwork running underneath your skin._

But the junkyard dog whimpers, tail between its legs. It knows enough to be afraid of things it doesn’t understand.

There is a murmur as the students recognize the newcomer as the famous Commander Shepard. Jack can see their heads turning toward her, their eyes brightening with hope.

They think she is here to save them.

Jack thinks back to Purgatory, and her lip curls up in a snarl.

 

_“Choose,” Shepard had said from behind the barrel of an assault rifle. “Me or them.“ She motioned at the guards._

_The station was minutes away from exploding. It wasn’t a real choice at all._

_"Fuck you,” Jack spat, pacing up and down the corridor of the docking bay. "I want my freedom.”_

_Shepard just looked at her, her eyes calm and steady._

_“You want to be free?” she said, lowering her gun. “Then earn your life back. If you can do that, I promise you, it’s yours. I won’t touch it.”_

_Jack looked over the railing at the burning station, sirens wailing and warning lights flashing red overhead, and then out at the ship hovering just beyond the dock, the black and gold Cerberus logo plainly visible on its hull._

_“How do I earn it back?“ she asked, turning back to Shepard._

_Shepard smiled. It was not a nice smile._

The punch is a spur of the moment decision she makes when she’s already halfway across the room, partly because by now she’s too keyed up not to punch _something_ , and partly because she wants to see if Shepard is still human enough to flinch.

So she winds back her arm, putting extra force into the blow, and slams her fist across Shepard’s face. “How many times did I tell you not to trust Cerberus?” she snarls.

Shepard doesn’t even stagger. “You’re not telling me anything I haven’t told myself,” she says, reaching up to touch her jaw.

Jack snorts. “I bet that’s a big comfort to all the people Cerberus has killed.”

“Charming as ever,” Vakarian drawls out beside her. _Fucking smartass_ , Jack thinks.

Shepard’s eyes go past her, to the students huddled at the edge of the room. “How soon can they move?” she asks.

They’ve been pushing themselves hard enough that they could use a real break, but Jack can see from Shepard’s face that they don’t have that kind of time. “Give us five to recharge, and we’re good to go.”

Shepard nods. “We’ll go in first and draw their fire,” she says, reloading her rifle.

“We’ll shadow you from the second level,” Jack says quickly. No way she’s putting her kids through a frontal assault like that, no matter who’s leading the charge.

There are more soldiers waiting for them in the Atrium. Jack herds her students through the upper levels while Shepard, Vakarian and the new guy make mincemeat of the enemy down below.

It should have been fun to watch so many Cerberus goons eat shit, but all Jack feels is a sick welter of unease in the pit of her stomach. Last time Shepard came to her rescue, it meant a trip through the Omega Relay, an army of undead horrors, and a fight she’s still not sure how she managed to survive. This time she has a feeling the price will be even higher.

And still, something in her can’t look away. Shepard moves across the floor of the Atrium like a dancer, implacable, unstoppable, with an economy of movement that makes her breath hitch in her throat. Watching her fight, Jack is reminded of a statue of an ancient asari goddess she saw once off world. The inscription flashes through her mind:

_All those who seek refuge, know this; I will break the jaws of death and snatch the prey from his teeth. But to invoke my protection is to be sworn to my service. To my chosen I am the shield and the sword. For though I grant them their lives, their deaths I claim as my own. And what is mine is mine forever._

Jack shivers, and turns her gaze away.

Her kids aren’t doing so bad themselves, she registers with a flash of pride. Rodriguez manages to launch a  _lift_ at just the right angle to send an engineer careening backwards into his own turret, tipping the thing off balance enough that it’s next round tears through a cluster of troopers advancing toward them. Jack smile disappears when she sees a couple of centurions craning their heads up, looking for the source of the attack.

“Incoming,” she calls out, as the troopers home in on their position. From down below she can see the red light of a sniper’s sight trained upward. “Shepard, keep them off us!”

Heavy footsteps ring out from the staircase behind them, and Jack turns around to see a line a of Guardians trudging forward, their shields held out in front of them in a wall of steel. Snarling, she pulls one up from the ranks. For a moment she lets him dangle, watching his feet kick uselessly at the air. Then she releases a shockwave that detonates the lingering energy, toppling them all back down the stairs. Jack follows, moving in to finish them off, when out of the corner of her eyes she sees a Phantom flip up over the side of the balcony to land in a crouch, sword outstretched.

She spins around, corona flaring. “Keep those barriers up!”

Prangley gets off a warp, and the Phantom staggers back. It raises one hand, and it’s palm flashes white. Jack hears Rodriguez cry out.  

Then suddenly Shepard pushes past her, the sharp retort of her gun drowning out the noise of the battle below. The Phantom drops to the ground, the sword falling from it’s limp hand.

Jack rushes over to where Rodriguez huddles white faced and trembling, clutching her right arm.

“You’re all right,” she says, squeezing her shoulder. The girl nods, wincing.

But as she applies medigel to the wound, Jack frowns. Something doesn’t add up. If the Phantom had wanted to kill her, it would have aimed for her head.

Shepard walks over to the balcony, holstering her pistol and pulling the sniper rifle down off her back. She levels her gun against the railing.

“Nice aim back there, kid,” she says, fiddling with the rifle’s sights. She looks up to raise an eyebrow at Jack. “She learn that from you?”

“Not me,” Jack says, wrapping the bandage. Precision strikes have never been her thing. Her chosen style has always been brute force, preferably applied from a range short enough to render aim irrelevant. “Rodriguez is a natural.”

Shepard turns to look appraisingly at the girl. Rodriguez gapes back at her, the shock of her wound momentarily forgotten. “I’ve had uh, a lot of practice,” she stammers.

“What kind of practice?” Shepard asks, leaning back over her gun.

Rodriguez flushes. “On the colony, there was a vermin infestation in the ducts. Sanitation would pay us for every body we turned in.”

“A ratcatcher, huh?” Shepard says, popping off a shot and grinning when it connects. “What’s the going rate these days? Back on Earth, it was one credit per tail.”

Now it’s Jack’s turn to gape.

“ _You_ were a ratcatcher?” she says, incredulous. She knew Shepard had a colorful past before the Alliance, but she’d always imagined her as an enforcer or a brawler, not some scrawny kid scrounging through the ducts for vermin carcasses.

Shepard shrugs. “Everyone’s gotta start somewhere,” she says, narrowing her eyes through the scope. Her gun barks out once, twice. The thermal clip ejects, steaming, and across the room Jack hears the high-pitched whine of an Atlas primed to explode.  A dull boom reverberates through the Atrium, and Shepard picks up a fresh clip. “It’s easy credits, once you get the hang of it,” she says as she loads it into the chamber, snapping the bolt handle into place with a practiced ease. “By the time I had enough saved up to buy my way into the Reds, the city was practically clean.”

Jack snorts. “Sounds like you missed your true calling.”

Shepard continues as if she hasn’t heard. “The trick,” she says, her finger hovering over the trigger, “is to let them come to you.” Far across the room, a centurion pokes his nose up out of cover. Shepard’s finger moves, and his helmet explodes into shards of red. She glances back at Rodriguez, flashing her a wide smile. “Isn’t that right, soldier?”

Jack goes cold.

“Yes, Ma’am,” Rodriguez replies, her eyes shining, and Jack watches as she fumbles a clumsy approximation of a salute.

Jack frowns. “Rodriguez,” she says, making her voice sharp. “Juice and an energy bar. Now. And what the hell happened to those barriers?” she shouts, rounding on the others. They scurry away.

When she can see they’re busy with rations and amp checks, she turns back.

“Shepard,” she says, quietly enough so that her voice won’t carry. “These kids aren’t _soldiers_.”

Shepard is still squinting down at the field through her scope. “Everyone’s a soldier now, Jack,” she says, squeezing off another shot. “Pretty soon there aren’t going to be any safe places left. Especially not for kids like these.”

“What do you mean,” Jack asks, even though she has the sinking suspicion that she already knows.

Shepard taps her ear again. “Room’s clear,” she says, and pauses, listening to a response Jack can’t make out. “Roger that. Meet you on the other side in ten.” She rises, pulling up her rifle. “You think it’s an accident Cerberus came here?” she says, loading the gun onto her back. “These kids are going to wind up fighting one way or another. Only question is for who.” She grins, and Jack can see the red glow of the implants behind her eyes. “I’d rather it be me.”

 _Choose_ , Jack remembers, a chill going down her spine. _Me or them_.

It wasn’t a fair choice. It never had been.

Shepard’s already moving toward the stairs. Jack glances quickly back at her kids, and then follows.

“After the Collector mission, you said we were square,” she says.

“We were,” Shepard says. She kneels down next to a fallen Dragoon who lies gasping at the bottom of the stairs, both his hands clutched over the gushing hole in his chest. Her shotgun discharges once, and the body goes still. She rises, still grinning her jackal’s smile. “But you just can’t seem to stay out of trouble.”

Jack swallows. “I didn’t ask for this,” she says, her voice rough. “For you to come here, to help us.”

“Somebody did,” Shepard says, leaning around a doorway and squinting out into the hall. “Got a distress call over the comms.”

“For fuck’s sake, Shepard,” Jack says. “They’re just kids.”

Shepard looks back, her face darkening. “I don’t take lives that aren’t offered,” she says. “You had your chance on the Collector ship. Your kids’ll get theirs on Earth.”  

“They’ll be ripped to shreds out there,” Jack hisses.

“Maybe,” Shepard says, loading a fresh clip into her shotgun. She walks down the hallway to where an assault trooper is sitting slumped over, a red stain smeared against the wall behind his head. “The way I see it, you owe a debt to everyone out there who died in the time it took me to save you,” she says, crouching down over the dead trooper. “Right now, that number’s edging up into the thousands.” She pulls something off the side of his gun and holds it up, eyeing it in the dim light. “I’ve seen you in action. I know you’re worth it.” With a grunt of satisfaction, she pockets the mod. “But you’ll still have to prove it. And so will they.”

“Why do there always have to be strings?” Jack says, her voice catching on the word. “For once, why can’t you just let them go?”

“Jack,” Shepard’s voice is light, chiding. “You know better than that.”  

Jack balls up the hand of one fist until she can feel the nails digging into her skin. “We don’t need you,” she insists. “We can do this on our own.”

Shepard stops, leaning against the side of the hallway. “You could, maybe,” she says, looking back over Jack’s shoulder. Her eyes go shrewd. “But could they?”

Jack turns around to see her students trailing after them, their faces bright and eager.

“Commander Shepard,” Prangley calls out breathlessly from down the hall. “Is it true that you took out a Thresher Maw on foot?”

“You’re damn right I did,” Shepard says in a loud, hearty voice that makes Jack’s skin crawl. “Now are you kids ready to see some real action?”

They erupt into cheers.

Jack closes her eyes, and turns away, crossing her arms to keep herself from shaking.

“Cheer up, Jack,” Shepard murmurs. “You’re headed to the frontlines.”

Jack opens her eyes. “You’d better pray the Reapers kill me,” she whispers, her voice harsh as a dog’s growl. “Because if I’m alive when this is over, I’ll be coming for you. And then we’ll both find out if there’s anything human enough left in you to die.”

She hears Shepard laugh, a low, brittle sound, like dry bones rubbing together. “I guess we will,” she says. “One way or another.”

Then she straightens up, puts her fingers to her mouth and whistles, the sound ringing out sharp and clear as the trill of a flute. 

“Move out, soldiers,” she calls, striding down the hallway, and Jack watches, helpless, as one by one, her kids follow.


End file.
